This dissertation introduced several issues concerning the analysis of diseases by showing how modeling and simulation could be used to assist in creating health policy by estimating the effects of such policies. The first question posed was how would education, vaccination and a combination of these two programs effect the possible outbreak of meningitis on a college campus. After creating a model representative of the transmission dynamics of meningitis and establishing parameter values characteristic of the University of Central Florida main campus, the results of a deterministic model were presented in several forms. The result of this model was the combination of education and vaccination would eliminate the possibility of an epidemic on our campus. Next, we used simulation to evaluate how quarantine and treatment would affect an outbreak of influenza on the same population. A mathematical model was created specific to influenza on the UCF campus. Numerical results from this model were then presented in tabular and graphical form. The results comparing the simulations for quarantine and treatment show the best course of action would be to enact a quarantine policy on the campus thus reducing the maximum number of infected while increasing the time to reach this peak. Finally, we addressed the issue of performing the analysis stochastically versus deterministically. Additional models were created with the progression of the disease occurring by chance. Statistical analysis was done on the mean of 100 stochastic simulation runs comparing that value to the one deterministic outcome. The results for this analysis were inconclusive, as the results for meningitis were comparable while those for influenza appeared to be different.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-5289 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Creators | Atkins, Tracy |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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